If you're so shocked and your trust is gone, you'd better switch to the forked project
Braver Browser.
if the forking is done only to remove the ref link, ...
Yes for now there have only been removed the reflinks and BAT token functionalities. But there are plans for the future to rebuild the browser. There are
discussions to base the browser on Firefox-Engine, remove all crypto wallets and all external services like Google Translate for example.